Thursday, February 17, 2005

Good lord, one more day

Class B was really great today!

Our work was 'spicing' up dialogue using varied speaker tags. For instance, instead of always using "said," using verbs like "whispered," "shouted," or "trembled." That makes it more interesting to read and it helps set the mood, no matter how mundane the actual words spoken.

Well, they got really excited and hands were waving all around the room. We made a list for "said" and a list for "asked" (pondered, wondered, inquired) and one for "laughed" (giggled, grinned, smiled, cracked) Even one for "walk" (bounced, jogged, stomped). They also kept coming up with adverbs, we made a list for that too (fiercely, aggressively, shyly).

I had to actually make them stop so that they could practice using these words. We used the silly little dialogue from yesterday (What are you doing? I'm fixing the dishwasher. Why is it making that noise? I don't know, that's why I'm fixing it.), and they wrote it twice: using different kinds of speaker tags to create a different mood of the conversation. It totally worked, they came up with great stuff.

I had been looking forward to seeing how Class A did with it, but unfortunately we had a stupid assembly. It was one of those fund-raising things that get the kids all riled up for prizes they'll never sell enough items to win. Grr.

Class C was chatty and distracted and it irritated me. I finally got fed up and gave them a pop quiz (just about the same one from Class B earlier this week).

Blah, I have more things I could probably talk about...but the most important thing to know is that tomorrow is the last day of school before break starts!